Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros51PortraitureFrom Heroic to Romantic: Reynolds...

Portraiture

From Heroic to Romantic: Reynolds’s Captain the Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753) and its Legacy

Du héros militaire à la figure romantique : variations sur Captain the Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753) de Joshua Reynolds
Hélène Ibata

Résumés

Dans son second portrait d’Augustus Keppel (1752-53), qui combine avec adresse portrait et peinture d’histoire tout en conjuguant mode héroïque et émotion préromantique, Joshua Reynolds participe à la construction d’une identité masculine sémantiquement fluide, capable d’assumer plusieurs rôles, dans un contexte d’expansion impériale, mais aussi de transition sociale et intellectuelle. Cet article examine l’influence que le tableau de Reynolds a pu avoir sur le portrait naval, prenant comme exemple Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth (1771) de John Hamilton Mortimer, ainsi que des représentations de Horatio Nelson. Il souligne ensuite la capacité du modèle à dépeindre de nouveaux types de célébrités dans ses déclinaisons romantiques, comme le suggèrent des portraits de Lord Byron, pour conclure sur une résurgence tardive de cette iconographie dans le North-West Passage de John Everett Millais (1874).

Haut de page

Texte intégral

  • 1 On the construction of military masculinities in 18th-century Britain, also see Julia Banister, Ma (...)

1The social transformations of the long 18th century in Western Europe are generally considered to have fostered the emergence of new ideals of behaviour – such as politeness and benevolence in Britain, or philosophical and rational thinking in France – which were no longer connected to rank and called into question the heroic codes of earlier times. Military heroism in particular was viewed with increased suspicion – being associated with brutality and connected with the old order and monarchic power – while new types of admirable conduct were found in those who advanced the common good through their intellectual exertions or useful inventions: artists, scientists, or those who came to be referred to as the grands hommes in France (Roger 2010; Asch 2019). The distrust of military glory was especially pronounced among the French philosophes, with Voltaire ironically describing battle scenes as “heroic carnage” (Candide 20) and Montesquieu arguing that “moderation, as the rarest of virtues, should be the foundation of heroism” (my translation, Montesquieu I, 1159). In Britain, the figure of the military hero – although far from unanimously embraced – caused fewer objections, partly because it evolved to adapt to social change, integrating the politeness of manners of the age for instance (Carter 75-6; Asch), partly because in many cases he was an officer of the Navy, who was less likely to be associated with royal power or aristocratic superiority than the land soldier and less visibly present in the realm (Asch 111-113 and Jenks 3). It could even be argued that in an age of imperial expansion, the British naval officer was constructed as a positive heroic figure who contrasted with the violence of earlier martial conduct: not only did he contribute to Britain’s transformation into the world’s leading maritime power and defend its commercial interests (Jenks 3-4), but he was also susceptible to bridge social divides by owing his promotion to meritorious professional conduct (see for instance Wilson, Asch 111-12, Ronald 55-77, Gazzard 21-27).1 What is more, his qualities reflected the new sensibilities of the age and a new conception of military masculinity. The figure of the maritime hero as a man characterized by energy, enthusiasm, courage, honour, but also humanity and sensibility, was “pivotal to the modern patriotism” (Ronald 3) that appeared in the second half of the 18th century and flourished at the time of the wars with France. His values especially aligned with the redefinition of British patrician identities that Linda Colley observes in the last decades of the 18th century, when the sons of the peerage and the gentry began to acquire uniform educational principles, combining knowledge of the classics with an emphasis on bravery and a readiness to sacrifice oneself for the state, in prestigious public schools and universities (Colley 167-70, 177-83).

2The present study aims to emphasize the role played by portrait painting in the construction of this British naval hero, as a figure that combined new attitudes to patriotism with complex individual qualities, through an analysis of Reynolds’s 1753 portrait of Commodore Augustus Keppel and artworks that were directly or indirectly inspired by it. The painting has received much attention as a defining moment in British portraiture. I would like to argue that beyond its contribution to grand portraiture, it provided a versatile pictorial identity that could be adapted to the context of imperial expansion, but could also evolve from old models of military heroism to conceptions that accommodated the changing sensibilities of the time. This point will be argued through the analysis of portraits that may be seen as adaptations of Reynolds’s formula in changing contexts.

Reynolds’s 1753 Keppel: the construction of a heroic pictorial identity

3In the spring of 1753, shortly after his return from a two-year sojourn in Italy, Joshua Reynolds exhibited a full-length portrait of his friend and patron Commodore Augustus Keppel, that was to become one of the most famous portraits of British naval officers, and to establish his reputation as a portrait painter (Fig. 1). According to James Northcote, the painting represented Keppel “as just escaped” from the shipwreck of the Maidstone frigate on the coast of Brittany, an event during which he had distinguished himself by saving the lives of his crew “by his skill and active exertions” (Northcote 36).

Figure 1. Joshua Reynolds, Captain the Honourable Augustus Keppel, 1753. Oil on canvas. 239 x 147.5 cm. National Maritime Museum.

Figure 1. Joshua Reynolds, Captain the Honourable Augustus Keppel, 1753. Oil           on canvas. 239 x 147.5 cm. National Maritime Museum.

© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.

  • 2 For detailed analyses of the painting, see especially Hallett 2014, 98-105, and So (...)

4Even though the ship was lost and Keppel and his men were made prisoners of war by the French, the commander is depicted striding confidently along a rocky and tempestuous shore, his right arm outstretched and his index finger pointing as if to give orders to his men.2 His improbably impeccable attire, whose golden embroidery and shimmering fabric attested to Reynolds’s skills as a portrait painter, also allows him to remain elegant and dignified. His pose, with its contrapposto stance and extended arm, has been traced back to classical statuary, more specifically the Apollo Belvedere and its adaptation by the French sculptor Legros (see especially Postle 1995, 16-17 and Hallett 100-101), some scholars also seeing a connection with the gesture that was used in Roman civic statuary to signify adlocutio, meaning either greeting or clemency (Solkin 44).

5Reynolds’s achievement in this portrait has been amply commented upon, and art historians have made much of the similarity with Allan Ramsay’s Norman, 22nd Chief of MacLeod, painted in 1748, which used a similar pose and also placed its subject within a natural setting (Solkin 44-46, Hallett 100), to account for Reynolds’s superior adaptation of the formula3. Waterhouse and Solkin, for instance, have highlighted the unprecedented unity of figure and natural surroundings, insisting on Reynolds’s superior ability – resulting from his “exposure to Italian art” (Solkin 46) – to fuse the subject with his background through the subtle use of light and shade as well as increased motion in the figure.

6It has also been pointed out that the painting allowed Reynolds to demonstrate his ability to elevate portraiture, by instilling the principles of grand style historical painting into the depiction of his contemporaries. Solkin, in particular, argues that in this painting Reynolds showed that he could communicate the civic virtue of his aristocratic patrons through a dignified and universalising manner, for example through flattering allusions to classical statuary that conveyed timeless values, or by making the figure’s heroic potential implicit rather than spelling it out through conventional narrative elements. In the process, he managed to strike a new path in British portraiture, raising it “to the level of a serious and ambitious art” (42) and “put[ting] forward his own definition of historical portraiture” (46). The portrait may thus be seen as a remarkable demonstration of an ideal that he was to praise later in his Discourses, the “art of animating and dignifying the figures with intellectual grandeur, of impressing the appearance of philosophick wisdom, or heroic virtue.” (“Discourse III”, Reynolds 50)

7Finally, scholars like Mark Hallett have underlined the emotional and pre-Romantic nature of the portrait, both in its dramatic lighting, and in its use of an inhospitable, menacing setting. Hallett points to the likely influence of Van Dyck’s equestrian portrait of Charles V, which Reynolds had recently sketched in Florence, and which shows the king against a stormy sky and a tumultuous sea, as well as Claude-Joseph Vernet’s stormy seascapes and shipwreck scenes, which Vernet began painting in the 1730s, and which Reynolds would have been able to see in Rome, where he had befriended the artist (102). These dramatic seascapes could be seen as the marine equivalent of Salvator Rosa’s landscapes, whose popularity in Britain reflected a new sensibility and a growing fascination for wild nature and its terrifying powers. By immersing the commander within such a setting, rather than just using it as a backdrop, Reynolds was showing his awareness of the changing taste of the day, possibly implying an intense emotional interaction between the individual and the powers of nature and playing with the sublime horror associated with the wrecking of the ship. But he was also using natural scenery as another efficient device to enhance the superior courage and dignity of the officer, who remains decisive, vigorous and elegant when facing the raging elements. According to Hallett, the interaction with a dangerous natural setting allows Keppel to “be defined not only as an elegant but also as a rugged hero – a figure who […] could justifiably be described as sublime in character.” (103)

8To appreciate Reynolds’s innovation, in particular the immersive and dynamic experience that is conveyed, one could compare the Keppel portrait with earlier naval portraits. The practice of placing naval officers in front of a maritime backdrop, even at times a tempestuous sea, was not new (see for instance Gazzard 27-30). In an early full-length portrait, Daniel Mytens’s Lord Howard of Effingham, painted around 1620, the elderly Lord High Admiral is placed in a safe and opulent interior, removed from the dangerous battles that he fought at sea, but the defeat of the Armada, his major victory, is represented in the distance, behind a theatrical curtain. A few years later, in 1640, Van Dyck represented another Lord High Admiral, Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, standing on the shore in elegant clothing, next to a large anchor, and in front of a battle at sea. In the mid-1660s, Peter Lely painted the highly influential Flagmen of Lowestoft, a series of three-quarter-length portraits depicting officers who had been victorious against the Dutch at the Battle of Lowestoft, on the 13th of June 1665, against backdrops of rugged rocks and naval battle scenes. Although the settings were all maritime, the series relied on theatrical props and legible motifs – like curtains, batons, anchors and cannons – and represented the sitters as spectators or mediators of past feats, rather than caught in the middle of the action. Reynolds’s more immediate predecessors, in particular his own teacher Thomas Hudson, had refined the art of the naval portrait, depicting elegant and composed naval officers standing on the shoreline, often against a silhouetted architectural element, and thereby removed from the naval feats that had distinguished them (Admiral Sir Chaloner Ogle, Captain Richard Chadwick, or Vice-Admiral John Byng, all painted in the 1740s, are typical examples4). Hudson’s influence is perceptible in the portraits of naval officers that the young Reynolds produced while he was still working in Plymouth, before his Italian stay, including an earlier depiction of Keppel (1749). In these mostly half-length or three-quarter length portraits, Reynolds often resorted to by-then formulaic conventions like the inclusion of the ship commanded by the officer in the distance, and classical architectural elements or curtains that articulated a reassuring, polite realm, often connected with landed property, and the maritime world (see for instance Gazzard 70 and Hallett 65).

9Compared to these prior works, Reynolds’s dynamic and resolutely immersive portrait of Keppel displayed new ambitions, not only for naval portraiture, but for portrait painting in general, and for this reason, it is generally considered to have established the painter’s reputation. The point is made by his first biographer, Edmond Malone, who wrote:

On his arrival in London in 1752, he very soon attracted the publick notice; and not long afterwards the whole-length portrait which he painted of his friend and patron, Admiral Keppel, exhibited such powers, that he was not only universally acknowledged to be at the head of his profession, but to be the greatest painter that England had seen since Vandyck (I, xvi)

10The portrait was rather unique in Reynolds’s production, and as Katherine Gazzard points out, the artist “did not employ the same model of highly theatrical representation in his subsequent naval portraits.” (87) Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that one of the reasons for its success had to do with the fact that its various innovations – the blending of portrait and history painting, the naval officer’s immersion within a fully natural setting, the subject’s confidence within a dangerous and frightening environment – all partook of the construction of a semantically fluid pictorial identity that suited the age well. For one thing, Reynolds provided a type of representation that was tailored to the nascent interest in celebrity and public figures, among whom, in a century marked by war, martial heroes featured prominently (Hallett 165-191; Postle 2005, 89-111; Gazzard 112-113; Banister 151-184). According to Antoine Lilti, who considers today’s celebrity culture to have emerged around the middle of the 18th century, a significant contribution to this development was the increased circulation of portraits, in the form of painted images that were exhibited in public spaces, but also as prints that could be produced in large numbers (Lilti 78-87). As the general public was beginning to collect print versions of the portraits of renowned military officers, Reynolds’s 1753 Keppel provided a welcome model to enhance their popularity, and showed in particular how they could be idealized and impress their viewers as unique individuals.

A new and adaptable heroic paradigm

11More specifically, the portrait partook in the construction of a new type of superior masculinity which could assume a multiplicity of male roles, especially in the context of Britain’s imperial expansion, but also in an age of intellectual transition.

12To begin with, the decision to present the officer as a historical actor, dynamic and decisive in dangerous foreign lands, contributed to shaping a new type of heroic individuals, whose dedication to the nation and resolution in the face of powerful natural forces made them worthy agents of discovery, conquest and expansion, as well as convincing representatives of Britain’s naval might. Following the model provided by Reynolds, in the second half of the 18th century, the representation of naval officers and explorers as dynamic and idealized figures on a hostile shore, unflinching among craggy rocks, a rough sea and stormy clouds, became a recurrent topos of British naval portraiture.

13But the new paradigm was also successful because of its semantic fluidity, which resulted from the combination of history and portrait painting, as well as from the immersion of the subject within a wild natural setting. Besides this generic versatility, the portrait of Keppel was a brilliant example of the “conflation of sensibility and militarism” which was emerging in British visual and verbal representations of military figures at the time (Hoock 181-82). It brought together a sense of dedication to the community – implicit in the reference to classical statuary – with a new conception of the individual, endowed with complex emotions and intellectual qualities. The figure’s sartorial and gestural elegance pointed to manners that had been refined through interactions with polite society and the company of women, implying benevolence, sensibility, even a hint of vulnerability, all of which resonated well with the sociable ideals of manliness that had recently been put forward by Hume in his 1742 essay “Of the rise and progress of the arts and sciences” (see Carter 74-76). At the same time, his lonely interaction with a tumultuous natural setting anticipated the figure of the Romantic wanderer lost in thought, at one with nature. Reynolds thus provided a model that could be adapted to the changing sensibility of the age and acquire Romantic attributes, while remaining relevant to the national narrative of conquest and expansion. As will be argued, its versatility was such that it could be transposed to other ideals of individual behaviour.

14As the rest of the paper will attempt to demonstrate, this Romantic-heroic paradigm continued to capture the public’s imagination through much of Britain’s era of naval domination and expansion, contributing to the cult of the naval hero, especially at times of war, but also providing a template for the depiction of new types of national heroes, which included intrepid explorers, as well as literary figures and artists. To argue this point, the analysis will focus on four adaptations of Reynolds’s model – direct or indirect - that illustrate its ability to confer heroic status in the cultural context of Britain’s imperial age, its evolving relevance and adaptability, as well as its historical limits.

Social etiquette and enterprise: the construction of Cook as a new type of hero

15In an age of exploration and imperial expansion, the model provided by the 1753 portrait of Keppel proved well suited for the transformation of some of Britain’s most successful navigators into heroic figures. One of its most interesting adaptations may be found in a group portrait by John Hamilton Mortimer, now at the National Library of Australia (Canberra), which is believed to be “the earliest extant image of the navigator” James Cook (Hetherington 74) (Fig. 2). It is now generally agreed that the portrait, painted around 1771, depicts Cook surrounded by four men that were connected in a variety of ways to his first expedition to the Pacific. To the left are two of his travelling companions, the naturalists Joseph Banks – sitting on a rock - and Daniel Solander, a famous disciple of Linnaeus. To the right, the Earl of Sandwich, first Lord of the Admiralty, is depicted leaning against a pedestal surmounted by a sensual feminine figure, with his dogs at his feet, possibly symbolizing the loyalty owed to him (Hetherington 72); finally, slightly behind Cook, the artist has included the writer John Hawkesworth, who had been commissioned to provide an account of recent British expeditions to the Pacific, including Cook’s Endeavour voyage. The five men stand on a hospitable English shore, framed by sheltering trees, adorned with classical statuary, against a backdrop of the cliffs of Dover and the English Channel.

Figure 2. John Hamilton Mortimer, Group portrait of Cook, Banks, Solander, Hawkesworth and Lord Sandwich, circa 1771. Oil on canvas. 120 x 166 cm. National Gallery of Australia.

Figure 2. John Hamilton Mortimer, Group portrait of Cook, Banks, Solander, Hawkesworth           and Lord Sandwich, circa 1771. Oil on canvas. 120 x 166 cm.           National Gallery of Australia.

© National Gallery of Australia.

16While the painting may be considered to belong to the category of the conversation piece, its relatively large format (which was not uncommon for Mortimer) suggests other ambitions, possibly historical. This is not the portrait of a group of friends, but of remarkable public figures, who have been brought together by their various contributions to the history of Britain’s naval achievements.

17In this composition, significantly, Cook is the only dynamic figure, flanked by meditative onlookers whose faces and positions all seem to converge towards him. Unlike his companions, he seems to be striding the shore, ready to leave for the open sea, towards which he points with his hat.

  • 5 In the last paragraph of his introduction to A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the (...)

18Michelle Hetherington interprets Cook’s pose as inspired by the practice of rendering “hat honour”, that is to say baring one’s head to social superiors, which was “an important part of 18th-century etiquette” (74-75). According to Hetherington, Mortimer has chosen to emphasize Cook’s deference to their common employer, the Earl of Sandwich. Cook’s humble origins, of which the navigator was clearly aware, as his journals and published writings attest,5 could certainly support such an interpretation; but the social connotation is intertwined with other meanings that emerge partly through association with Reynolds’s 1753 portrait of Keppel, with which the representation of Cook bears a number of similarities. Even though Keppel appears more commanding and decisive, and his unbuttoned coat implies greater emancipation from social etiquette; and even though he points to the shore when Cook directs the viewer’s gaze towards the sea, the two men are shown stepping forward, confidently standing on their front foot, with their shoulders placed off-axis in the classical contrapposto position that could also be found in Legros’ Apollo. At the same time, their extended right arm shows that they are men of action, one guiding his men in response to adversity, the other pointing to further discovery and adventures at sea. In other words, through association with Reynolds’s work and its classical references, Mortimer has transformed a gesture of deference into an expression of confidence and enterprise, and given Cook a form of superiority that transcends the social hierarchy of the time. The transformation is underpinned by an overall composition which revolves around the figure of the navigator, who rises visually above his companions and towards whom their eyes are drawn.

  • 6 Individual portraits of Cook emphasize his determination by depicting him absorbed in his (...)

19Like Keppel, Cook is to be seen as polite and decisive, sensible and manly. A significant difference has to do with Mortimer’s emphasis on sociability, rather than on the individual facing nature alone. Even though Reynolds’s Keppel provided a likely model, the explorer is not a Romantic individual facing the wilderness alone, but is expected to be seen as a courageous member of an inquisitive and adventurous society, supported by the social fabric and the welcoming shores of his home country.6

Military and literary celebrities of the Romantic age

20At the turn of the 19th century, new political and intellectual circumstances called for redefinitions of masculinity, as the wars with France led to a “revival of militaristic ideals among the British elite” (Hoock 179), while a marked shift in sensibility placed unprecedented emphasis on individual affect. Several features of Reynolds’s Keppel were to prove particularly suited to these redefinitions. They were successfully fused into Romantic delineations of the military hero, more specifically what Marcia Pointon calls the trope of the “loneliness of the commander” (Pointon 25), the figure of the solitary great man, meditating alone among the elements on the eve of battle. The pose and immersive setting chosen by Reynolds may especially be discerned in several portraits of Nelson, which partook of the process of construction of the admiral as a “popular cult figure”, characterized by merit, personal initiative and courage in the face of danger (Jordan and Rogers 216; Jenks 183-247).

21John Hoppner’s full-length portrait of the admiral, which depicts him on a rocky shore, against a backdrop consisting of an ominous sky and a distant battle at sea, seems to be closely inspired by Reynolds’s immersive and sublime natural setting, using the same dark palette and natural elements to cause in the viewer a mixture of fear (at the dangers that are being faced) and awe (at Nelson’s ability to face these dangers). While Nelson’s well-known amputation makes it impossible to reproduce the gesture of the right arm in Reynolds’s portrait, the use of contrapposto and the position of the right leg convey a similar sense of energy and motion. The portrait also blurs the boundaries between portrait painting and history painting by representing the admiral reflecting about the course of the battle, as if caught in the historical moment.

22A widely disseminated 1809 print by William Bromley, after Robert Bowyer (Fig. 3), also points to the influence of Reynolds, especially in its choice of a dangerous immersive setting: Nelson is shown standing against a large rock, and the nearby waves crashing on the shore convey a sense of elemental chaos, with surf, clouds and rocks violently churned together next to the unperturbed admiral. The depiction is of particular interest, because it merges a distinct Romantic sensibility with the ideal of the naval hero as typified by Nelson. Nelson is absorbed in his own thoughts, looking away from the viewer, but also conveying a strong sense of self-possession. And while his isolation points to the trope of the solitary great man, it also highlights his intense emotional connection with the natural world, as he stands against a rock, battered by the waves, with no other sign of human presence, not even a distant ship.

Figure 3. William Bromley, after Robert Bowyer, The Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson, 1809. Print. 70.9 x 47 cm. Public domain.

Figure 3. William Bromley, after Robert           Bowyer, The Right Honourable Lord Viscount           Nelson, 1809. Print. 70.9 x 47 cm. Public domain.

© Rijksmuseum.

23This type of moody representation seems to have played a crucial part in conferring or at least enhancing celebrity status in the early 19th century, especially when, as was the case with this portrait, the image was then circulated through the medium of print. The process was not limited to naval portraits. Remarkably, the dissemination of a Keppel-like portrait through widely-circulated prints was instrumental to the posthumous glory of Lord Byron. The Finden brothers’ print, produced in 1830, was a graphic translation into a single portrait of George Sanders’s double portrait of Byron and Robert Rushton, painted in 1807-08, showing the two men on a mountainous and windy shore – with Byron standing on terra firma and Rushton pushing a dinghy in the water7 (). The print, either as a full-length portrait of Byron on a wild seashore or as a half-length portrait, was the most disseminated visual representation of the author in the 19th century (Peach 28), and contributed to his fame as a wind-swept and pensive adventurer (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. Edward Finden, after George Sanders. Lord Byron at the age of 19, 1837. Print. 25 x 15.8 cm. Public domain.

Figure 4. Edward Finden, after George           Sanders. Lord Byron at the age of 19, 1837. Print. 25 x 15.8 cm.           Public domain.

© The New York Public Library.

24In many ways, Sanders’s portrait of Byron seems to be a meditative adaptation of Reynolds’s Keppel: the contrapposto pose is more static, Byron’s outstretched right arm is resting on a rock, and the face that is slightly turned to the right, looking away from the viewer, is self-absorbed rather than giving orders; but the resemblance is striking. The connection with Reynolds’s portraiture seems to have been an underlying theme since, as Annette Peach suggests, Sanders may also have had in mind Reynolds’s portrait of Byron’s grandfather, Admiral the Hon. John Byron (Peach 28).

25Most significantly, the portrait seems to confirm the Romantic potential of Reynolds’s prototype, which could equally be adapted to the celebration of the naval leaders of the age and to the idealisation of a new kind of remarkable individual, the literary genius. Sanders’s painting emphasizes a heightened emotional connection with the natural setting, which seems to function as a source of inspiration for the author as he stands pensively on the shore. Peach suggests that Sanders may have had in mind the poet’s evocation of the Scottish Highlands in ‘Stanzas’:

I would I were a careless child,
Still dwelling in my highland cave,
Or roaming through the dusky wild,
Or bounding o’er the dark blue wave;
The cumbrous pomp of Saxon pride
Accords not with the freeborn soul,
Which loves the mountain’s craggy side,
And seeks the rocks where billows roll. (ll. 1-8)

Place me along the rocks I love,
Which sound to Ocean’s wildest roar. (ll. 51-52)
(Peach 28)

26Viewed in the light of these lines, the choice of the setting partakes of the construction of Byron’s Romantic persona, as intensely connected with the wild Highlands of his childhood. But the Keppel-like pose adds a heroic dimension to the process, as Reynolds’s model of a military masculinity, with its combination of sensibility and manliness, is transposed to the unique individuality of the Romantic author. Like his military predecessor, the latter is elevated by his determination, his self-possession, but also his ability to confront and interact with powerful natural forces. To this should be added that when the engravings were produced in 1830, Byron had demonstrated his ability to combine military valour with intellectual energy and inspiration, making the choice of Sanders’s portrait particularly relevant to his posthumous glorification.

Towards a redefinition of naval pictorial identities

27British imperialism and wars with other European powers continued to feed ideals of heroic manliness and patriotism through much of the 19th century. Hero worship peaked during the Napoleonic wars, but was also revived around the middle of the century. William Napier’s History of the War in the Peninsula, published between 1828 and 1840, popularized and “refined the code of the chivalrous, disinterested, virtuous military hero for a Victorian audience” (Hoock 376), while Thomas Carlyle’s 1841 study On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History argued for the necessity to admire great men, albeit those whose worth was measured by intellectual achievements or impactful leadership, rather than military qualities. Nevertheless, challenges to the belief in men’s superior abilities and achievements became perceptible in the 1860s, as women began to claim a share of the political and professional sphere, and gained access to higher education. These tensions are perceptible in the fate of the naval portrait, and more specifically of the pictorial identity that had so strikingly asserted itself in Reynolds’s 1753 Keppel, a century earlier.

28John Everett Millais’ North-West passage, painted in 1874 (Fig. 5), highlights these ambiguities while revisiting the iconography of the naval portrait. The painting depicts an old retired sailor sitting at a table that is covered by Robert McClure’s chart of the first successful navigation of the Northwest Passage (Cheetham). He seems to have been poring over the map, but is temporarily distracted by a young woman reading by his feet. Just above his head is a print of Bowyer’s portrait of Nelson, in reference to the fact that the latter had taken part in a polar expedition in 1773 (Cheetham).

Figure 5. John Everett Millais, The North-West Passage, 1874. Oil on canvas. 176.5 x 222.2 cm.

Figure 5. John Everett Millais, The North-West Passage, 1874. Oil on canvas.           176.5 x 222.2 cm.

© Tate Britain. Photo: Tate

29The painting has often been interpreted as supporting a patriotic message (Bury 172-73), which is to some extent justified by its subtitle, often misquoted in the late 19th century as “It might be done, and England ought to do it’ (Millais himself had used “should” instead of “ought to”). The injunction was a possible reference to the navigational quest for the Northwest passage that had nourished heroic aspirations since Martin Frobisher’s expeditions in the 1570s, although, as Mark Cheetham points out, the quest had recently been considered completed by John Franklin’s tragic 1845 voyage, as well as by Robert McClure’s in 1850, and the context of the painting was likely that of the British Arctic Expedition of 1875-1876, the “It” referring to “planting the British flag on the geographic North Pole in the near future” (Cheetham). Millais’s own son saw the painting as an eloquent expression “of the manly enterprise of the nation and the common desire that to England should fall the honour of laying bare the hidden mystery of the North.” (II, 48)

30In spite of the implied patriotic support of British exploration, however, critics have also observed that the message of the painting, and its representation of masculinity in particular, are ambiguous (Bury 174-182). To begin with, even though the painting expresses the contemporary fascination for polar exploration, it also focuses on the one part of the world that had offered most resistance to British and European exploration, and instead of providing the hoped-for trading route between the Atlantic and the Pacific, had been an endless source of struggle and drama (as evidenced by the disastrous Franklin expedition of 1845).

31The painting also offered a new paradigm of naval masculinity: unlike the previous portraits presented in this study, it shows a domestic and reflective figure, rather than a man of action in a coastal setting, which may be understood as an implicit reexamination of the type of Romantic individualism and heroism that was so apparent in the portraits of Nelson and Byron.

32The model for the old sailor was Edward John Trelawny, an author and adventurer who had served as a naval volunteer between the ages of 13 and 19, and fought in the Greek war of independence. Through his friendship with Shelley and Byron and his adventurous life, Trelawny could be considered an emblematic figure of the Romantic age. Yet, instead of being represented as a subject standing for his own achievements, he is used as a model for the figure of the weathered old sailor, in order to lend veracity to what can be seen as a genre painting, a domestic scene that is not even biographical, but fictional.

33Significantly, Millais’s quest for authenticity in Trelawny’s features was seen as a fault by Swinburne, who did not notice the generic difference and complained that the literal depiction lacked the distinction of Reynolds’s portraits:

Did you see his portrait as an old sailor in Millais’ picture of ‘The North-West Passage’, exhibited this year? A splendid piece of work, and an unmistakable likeness, but, of course utterly wanting what Reynolds, of course, would have given – the nameless, general air of distinction, and what people call ‘birth,’ or ‘blood,’ for fault of a better word, which we ought to invent among us, for it is a very real and actual quality, and as patent in Trelawney [sic] as his look of weather-beaten hardihood with which it assorts so well (67-8).

34The literal, naturalistic representation of the old adventurer that Swinburne saw as a flaw could in fact be seen as reflecting a change of paradigm. The old sailor is no longer an idealized individual, standing for his own achievements and embodying a form of heroism that can only be found in distinguished individuals, but a well-known Romantic adventurer, lending his unique and rugged features to a depersonalized narrative about the nation’s seafaring accomplishments. What could have been a faithful portrait of Trelawny is subsumed by the national narrative of maritime expansion. Naval glory cannot be ascribed to remarkable individuals only, but to the whole nation, the navigators, but also the women who faithfully support their endeavours at home. In such a conception, while the message remains patriotic, the ideal of the Great Man or outstanding hero seems to be in the process of being superseded by a reflection in which individual military celebrity is no longer center stage.

35This evolution of the paradigm is also suggested by the composition of the painting, which was criticized for its awkwardness and the over-significant clutter that served the narrative rather than the aesthetic effect. The anonymous critic of the Art Journal complained about “the absence of any artistic consideration of the materials [the artist] has here thrown together”, adding that “nothing seems to take its place by reason of the necessities of composition, nor in order to help a purpose in the work.” (Art Journal, June 1874. Quoted in Bury 174).

  • 8 Millais’s potential deconstruction of earlier ideals of manly behaviour was not isolated (...)

36One could suggest that instead of being awkward and lacking in purpose, the domestic space, with its apparent resistance to “the necessities of composition”, partakes of the broader reexamination of earlier heroic models. By bringing together motifs that connote femininity (the flowers on the table, the wicker basket on the floor, the beautiful oriental vase, the chinaware on the side table – which also function as signs of exploration and imperial expansion) with the explorer’s paraphernalia (the map, the telescope on the side table, the logbook on the floor next to it, but also the large Union Flag against the wall), it suggests that the old navigator’s world has become entangled in the domestic sphere. More remarkably perhaps, the horizontal format of the painting, which complements the sitting position of the navigator to connote a form of passivity, also undercuts past models of manly heroism.8 Significantly, the spatial constraints of the format mean that the frame of Nelson’s vertical portrait is cut at the top, underlining the decentered position of the emblematic heroic portrait within the composition.

37Joseph Kestner sees Millais’s painting as part of “a continuum of constructions of heroizing masculinity”, because of Trelawny’s association with “the Napoleonic period and the victories of Nelson and Wellington.” (Kestner 29) The mise en abyme of Bowyer’s portrait of Nelson provides an obvious link to earlier constructions, which continue to inspire admiration and perhaps a form of nostalgia, but its unobtrusive presence within the cluttered pictorial space also suggests that new narratives of maritime expansion, less centered on the heroic masculine individual, are being explored.

Conclusion

38This paper has attempted to retrace the genesis and evolution of a construction of heroic masculinity that proved particularly efficient to articulate patriotic messages in an age of imperial expansion with the changes in sensibility that characterize the period. It has shown that from Reynolds’s 1753 Keppel to Millais’s 1874 The North-West Passage, the figure of the adventurous navigator or naval officer continued to embody a model of courage, adventurousness and manly endurance. It also accommodated a gradual shift from ideals of politeness in the middle of the 18th century to heightened individual emotions in the Romantic period, to a more impersonal form of participation in Britain’s maritime enterprise. By the time it made its way into Millais’s painting, the pictorial model provided by Reynolds had become a small embedded image, and the individual hero a universalized and potentially depersonalized symbol of patriotic dedication, caught within a larger narrative of national maritime endeavour.

I would like to thank my research group, SEARCH (Savoirs dans l’Espace Anglophone – Représentations, Culture, Histoire – UR 2325), for their financial support in purchasing the image rights for this publication. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Works cited

Anon. “The Royal Academy.” Art Journal (June 1874): 161-66.

BANISTER, Julia. Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture, 1689-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

BEAGLEHOLE, John C. The Life of Captain James Cook. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974.

BURY, Laurent. “A Certain ‘Want of Arch-Inscape’? The Critical Reception of Millais’s North-west Passage (1874).” Arctic Exploration in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Frédéric Regard. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013.

CARTER, Philip. Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Britain 1600-1800 (Women and Men in History). London: Routlege, 2001.

CHEETHAM, Mark. “Millais’s Metapicture: The North-West Passage as Distillate of Arctic Voyaging from the Anglosphere”. British Art Studies 19 (February 2021). https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-19/mcheetham. (Last accessed 21 April 2023).

COLLEY, Linda. Britons. Forging the Nation 1707-1837. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.

GAZZARD, Katherine. Portraiture and the British Naval Officer, 1739-1805. PhD dissertation. University of East Anglia, 2019.

HALLETT, Mark. Reynolds: Portraiture in Action. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014.

HETHERINGTON, Michelle. “John Hamilton Mortimer and the discovery of Captain Cook.” The British Art Journal 4. 1 (Spring 2003): 69-77.

HOOCK, Holger. Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850. London: Profile Books, 2010.

JENKS, Timothy. Naval Engagements: Patriotism, Cultural Politics and the Royal Navy, 1793-1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

JORDAN, Gerald and Nicholas ROGERS. “Admirals as Heroes: Patriotism and Liberty in Hanoverian England.” Journal of British Studies 28.3 (July 1989): 201-224.

KESTNER, Joseph. Masculinities in Victorian Painting. Aldershot: Scolar, 1995.

LILTI, Antoine. Figures publiques: L’invention de la célébrité. Paris: Fayard, 2014.

MALONE, Edmond. The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knight: Containing his Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary of Du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting. 2 vols. London: T. Cadelle and W. Davies, 1797.

MILLAIS, John G. The Life and Letters of John Everett Millais. London: Methuen, 1899.

MONTESQUIEU. Mes Pensées. Œuvres complètes. Paris : Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1949.

NORTHCOTE, James. Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knt. London: Henry Colburn, 1813.

PEACH, Annette. “Portraits of Byron.” The Volume of the Walpole Society 62 (2000): 1-144.

POINTON, Marcia. Portrayal and the Search for Identity. London: Reaktion Books, 2013.

POSTLE, Martin. “An Early Unpublished Letter by Sir Joshua Reynolds”. Apollo 141 (June 1995): 16–17.

POSTLE, Martin, ed. Joshua Reynolds. The Creation of Celebrity. London: Tate Publishing, 2005.

REYNOLDS, Joshua. Discourses on Art. Ed. Robert R. Wark. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975.

SOLKIN, David. “Great Pictures or Great Men”. Oxford Art Journal 9.2 (1986): 42-49.

ROGER, Philippe. “Avatars de l’héroïsme au siècle des Lumières,” in Héroïsme et Lumières, ed. Sylvain Menant and Robert Morrissey. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010.

SWINBURNE, Algernon Charles. The Letters of Charles Algernon Swinburne, with some Personal Recollections. Ed. Thomas Hake and Arthur Compton-Rickett. London: John Murray, 1918.

VOLTAIRE. Candide. Trans. Lowell Bair. New York: Random House, 2003.

WILSON, Evan. A Social History of British Naval Officers, 1775-1815. London: The Boydell Press, 2017.

Haut de page

Notes

1 On the construction of military masculinities in 18th-century Britain, also see Julia Banister, Masculinity, Militarism and Eighteenth-Century Culture, 1689-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018)

2 For detailed analyses of the painting, see especially Hallett 2014, 98-105, and Solkin.

3 See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Norman_MacLeod,_clan_chief,_1747.JPG.

4 See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Byng.jpg)

5 In the last paragraph of his introduction to A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World (1777), his account of his second voyage, he insisted on his humble social status, but also on his rise from the lower ranks through merit: “It is a work for information and not for amusement, written by a man, who has not the advantage of Education, acquired, nor Natural abilities for writing; but by one who has been constantly at sea from his youth, and who, with the Assistance of a few good friends gone through all the Stations belonging to a Seaman, from a prentice boy in the Coal Trade to a Commander in the Navy.” (Quoted in Beaglehole 471)

6 Individual portraits of Cook emphasize his determination by depicting him absorbed in his thoughts, with an intent look, as in Nathaniel Dance’s famous 1776 Captain James Cook, which shows the navigator sitting with a map on his lap, looking away from the viewer, and John Webber’s posthumous portrait, which depicts him standing against a rock on a stormy seashore.

7 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George_Sanders_%281774-1846%29_-_George_Gordon,_6th_Lord_Byron_%281788-1824%29_-_RCIN_402411_-_Royal_Collection.jpg.

8 Millais’s potential deconstruction of earlier ideals of manly behaviour was not isolated at the time. A similar use of a horizontal format, with a reclining military figure, may be found, for instance, in Tissot’s 1870 Gustavus Burnaby.

Haut de page

Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. Joshua Reynolds, Captain the Honourable Augustus Keppel, 1753. Oil on canvas. 239 x 147.5 cm. National Maritime Museum.
Crédits © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8688/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 182k
Titre Figure 2. John Hamilton Mortimer, Group portrait of Cook, Banks, Solander, Hawkesworth and Lord Sandwich, circa 1771. Oil on canvas. 120 x 166 cm. National Gallery of Australia.
Crédits © National Gallery of Australia.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8688/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 64k
Titre Figure 3. William Bromley, after Robert Bowyer, The Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson, 1809. Print. 70.9 x 47 cm. Public domain.
Crédits © Rijksmuseum.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8688/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 276k
Titre Figure 4. Edward Finden, after George Sanders. Lord Byron at the age of 19, 1837. Print. 25 x 15.8 cm. Public domain.
Crédits © The New York Public Library.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8688/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 131k
Titre Figure 5. John Everett Millais, The North-West Passage, 1874. Oil on canvas. 176.5 x 222.2 cm.
Crédits © Tate Britain. Photo: Tate
URL http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/docannexe/image/8688/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 718k
Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Hélène Ibata, « From Heroic to Romantic: Reynolds’s Captain the Honourable Augustus Keppel (1753) and its Legacy »Interfaces [En ligne], 51 | 2024, mis en ligne le 30 juin 2024, consulté le 13 novembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/interfaces/8688 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/122dl

Haut de page

Auteur

Hélène Ibata

Université de Strasbourg, SEARCH (UR 2325)
Hélène Ibata is Professor of English and visual studies at the University of Strasbourg. Her work on Romantic visual culture includes The Challenge of the Sublime: from Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry to British Romantic Art (2018, Manchester University Press). She has also published articles on the sublime, Romantic artist travellers, early panoramas, book illustrations, exhibition practices, William Blake and J.M.W. Turner, in journals like Word and Image, The European Romantic Review, Romanticism on the Net and The British Art Journal. Her most recent research focuses on the idea of landscape and its evolution from Romantic times to the current environmental crisis.

Articles du même auteur

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search